On the top shelf of one of the cabinets is an armillary sphere, an astronomical instrument, hanging from a hook by an ivory or wooden handle. It is similar to the small portable brass spheres used in the fifteenth century for teaching elementary astronomy. We see in it, accurately depicted according to the Ptolemaic system that placed the earth at the center of the universe, a small terrestrial globe surrounded by its celestial coordinates: the meridians, the equator, and arctic and antarctic rings, as well as the wider, oblique band of the ecliptic (the sun's path), which sometimes carried the signs of the zodiac.

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